New Union Will Recruit County’s Fieldworkers

A coalition of unions that represent agricultural workers in the Southwest plans to merge into a new labor union and organize the 11,000 farm workers employed in San Diego County, an organizer said Monday.

Ventura Gutierrez, a Calexico organizer, said several independent unions that now represent about 750 farm workers who toil along the border from California to Texas will meet in El Mirage, Ariz., over the weekend to form the Border Agriculture Workers Union. One of the new union’s top priorities will be to organize thousands of agricultural workers in San Diego County.

The union’s first local organizing attempt will be at Herb Farms in Encinitas, which employs about 50 workers, Gutierrez said. Borrowing a page from the United Farm Workers union, Gutierrez said the new agriculture workers’ union will use college students from UC San Diego and San Diego State University in organizing activities.

“Our goal is that one day all agriculture workers in the county will be unionized, maybe not necessarily with us. How many will join with us depends on our efforts,” Gutierrez said Monday in a telephone interview.

He added that Herb Farms was chosen as the union’s first local organizing target because “there’s somebody working there with whom we already have a relationship.”

Andrew Papageorge, general manager of Herb Farms, said that Gutierrez has attempted to organize some of his employees for about a year without much success and disputed his claim that as many as 50 workers could be unionized.

“We have fewer than 50 employees. He’s been concentrating on about 22 workers for the past year, but without much success. The workers are telling me that; plus the fact that he’s been trying for about a year tells me that he hasn’t been successful,” said Papageorge.

Gutierrez said that farm workers need to be organized in the county because they are being exploited by the growers.

“In addition to being mistreated and cheated on wages, the workers have very few social services available to them. Later this month, we plan to open an office in North County to coordinate the organizing efforts and provide social services to the workers,” said Gutierrez.

He estimated that about 7,000 of the county’s farm workers are Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Gutierrez said the union plans to open field offices along the U.S.-Mexican border, from El Paso to San Diego. The organization will also open offices in Mexico, with the first one in the state of Michoacan, he added.

Papageorge said there is a “general concern” among local growers about plans to organize farm workers.

“We had a number of operators that were unionized and had to shut their doors. About four local growers ended up walking away when their workers were unionized. There’s a general concern about these union activities,” Papageorge said.